What is Left
by On the Straight and Narrow
Summary: Link has failed. Hyrule has been all but wiped off the map, moblins roam the land day and night and his shadow is the only "sane" soul left alive. What can the Hero do when there is no hope? Link x Dark Link


**Hello! This story was inspired was some other fanfictions, so if it seems familiar, well, there might be a reason for that. I can't remember which ones though, sorry. It's also my first fanfiction and lightly edited, so it's not perfect. **

**This is Link x Dark Link, and is an AU where Link lets Dark live when he meets him in the water temple. **

Dark thought that if Link ever started kissing back, it would mean that Link was finally his. But as he pressed closer, Dark only felt a hollow sense of victory. It was like the consolation prize you received because you chose to be greedy, rather than just being happy with the rupees you had.

Link wasn't kissing him from passion or impulse or need. No, he'd surrendered. Given up.

He had been worn down, from the kingdom of Hyrule, from the endless enemies, from Dark himself and now the Hero of Time was finally defeated.

The kiss was soft even though Dark pushed roughly against Link. He didn't like it – he thought Link would put up a fight, vy for dominance – but now the Hero let himself be moved and used.

Dark now had what he thought he'd been longing for – Link's body. But his heart remained as unattainable as ever.

He had failed.

Link wandered the burned streets of Castle Town, charred buildings long extinguished from the fires that defiled them. More often than not there were no buildings at all, just piles of charcoal on the ground where they used to be. Ganondorf's forces had spared nothing. Every stone wall had been knocked down, metal items were warped and twisted and, occasionally Link heard, and felt, bones crunching underfoot.

He knew this was mirrored in the other towns, as Hyrule had been razed.

Ganondorf had won.

Link stopped in what used to be the city square. Destroyed market stalls lay scattered, merchandise only sometimes recognisable. Glass bottles had melted in the heat of the fires and any form of food was ash and dust. The fountain was blackened and filled with objects that sent a sickening smell across to Link on the breeze.

Crunching footsteps sounded behind Link and their owner came to a stop beside him.

"I told you, Link. Fighting was useless; you never could have won." Dark said.

Link stared, expressionless, ahead.

"You should have just joined me; it would have saved you the hassle of running to and fro and tending to peoples whims. How many times did you almost get pecked to death by cuccos? And don't get me started on the temples." Dark smirked. Link thought back to those glorified torture chambers, yet didn't show any sense of emotion. "You're lucky you had so many fairies, hero."

Dark smiled. "Everyone's dead now. You and me and the screams on the wind, we're the only ones left in Hyrule who give a damn about living here. So we'll be spending a lot of time together, won't we?" He moved closer, putting his lips near the shell of Link's ear.

"And I know how much you _love _my company. We'll camp out in Hyrule field, and who knows who, sorry, _what_ might go down under the sta-"

Dark stopped in mid-sentence as both boys looked up, listening. The faint sound of moblin chatter carried towards them on the breeze and a small dust cloud was visible, signalling that a large group of enemies was about a kilometre away.

Dark stepped back from Link and groaned in annoyance. "Ganondorf and I aren't exactly on friendly terms anymore. It's a nuisance when running into his henchmen, I actually have to fight them rather than just walk past. Can you believe that?" He asked incredulously.

Link responded by pulling out his sword.

"Ooh, taking these guys head on, are we? I thought you were so devastated by all this destruction that you had lost the will to live! Oh, wait that's the point of fighting them, isn't it?" Link's eyes slid over to look at Dark, hatred seeping out to meet red eyes.

Dark broke his gaze. "Aww, you do listen to the things I say, however much you deny it."

He unsheathed his black blade and checked it. Flawless. It helped that the blade was powerfully magical, forged from darkness itself.

Link headed off to exit Castle Town, no doubt to head in the direction of the dust cloud. Dark followed as they picked their way through the wreckage and arrived at Hyrule field. Dark estimated there were around fifty moblins in the distance marching towards them.

Link stopped one hundred meters from the entrance and shrugged round his shield onto his right arm. Dark did the same.

"No picking them off with arrows first? I thought that was your style – use everything at your disposal." Dark grinned. "Looking forward to a nice and bloody fight, huh? Don't get sloppy now."

Both swordsmen raised their weapons and stood ready. Shouts of alarm sounded from the moblins, now four hundred meters way. The pack started moving faster and within minutes, Dark was slicing his way through his first moblin.

Link and Dark worked individually, mowing down the enemies with identical strokes, slashes and thrusts. It wasn't too long until Dark dispatched the moblin he was fighting with a thrust to the gut, saw the light leaving its eyes (oh, the thrill!) and looked around, no more living enemies in sight. He was surrounded by bodies, but saw that Link was surrounded by more, most of them headless. He was wiping his blade on the vest of a moblin when he glanced up and met Darks gaze. The fire in his eyes had died down, and Link was back to his blank expression.

He hadn't made a single sound during the fight.

"Nothing wakes you up more in the morning than a little massacre, am I right?" Dark called out.

Link pointedly looked up to the sun as if to say "it's past noon, you moron." Dark just snorted and waded through the bodies to get closer, sheathing his sword and putting back his shield. His blade now clean, Link also put away his weapons and began walking across the field. Dark easily fell into step beside him.

"It was inevitable. There was no way you could have saved everyone, but you tried anyway and, of course, you failed, Hero."

"Don't call me that." Link said sharply.

"What, 'hero'? But that's what people call you – called you before you'd even made any sort of difference to their lives. They'd placed their hope in you from the very beginning – their trust and their _lives_ – in you! The Princess especially. And now, you've failed them all… hero."

Link stopped, letting Dark pass him and look back. He clenched his fists and stared daggers at Dark, clearly warning him to stop talking. Dark took no heed and continued on, gazing out over the expanse of the field.

"You thought you could do everything, be that _one_ hero who gets a pain-free, happy ending. But it's impossible! Even without biting off more than you can chew, you would have _died_ in the end. I told you that you couldn't do it, and now look at you! Sulking like a little child who was denied his five rupees from his pare-"

_WHAM!_

Link suddenly lunged forward and punched him across the jaw. "Shut UP! You don't know anything about what it was like! I lost _seven_ _years_ of my life and then _they_ had the audacity to order me to save Hyrule without giving a single thought to what I might want! All I could do was this STUPID QUEST! And I failed!"

He sighed, the anger leaving as quickly as it came, and scuffed a piece of grass by his boot. "I've given everything to Hyrule and now, my best wasn't good enough. I don't have anything left."

Dark massaged his jaw and worked his mouth open and closed before speaking. "Too little, too late, Hero."

Link didn't reply, his face once more expressionless. Dark moved closer, his eyes flicking up and down Link's hunched figure, and slowly breathed out.

"You hate yourself right now," he stated, "and I don't blame you. But I'm always going to call you hero, because you did save one person… me. And, call me selfish, but I think that's all that matters. Because _you're_ alive too."

Dark took hold of Link's chin and tilted his head so he was looking into his eyes.

"And that's even better."

This time Dark could see the emotions flit across Link's face, from shame to depression to desperation, before Link wiped his face clean of his thoughts again. His eyes flickered down to Darks lips.

"Distract me."

Dark smirked, "With pleasure."

And he leaned forward, crushing his lips to Link's, moving his hands to hold the sides of his face. This wasn't the first time Dark had kissed Link; in fact Dark did it so regularly that Link had stopped fighting it and just let Dark amuse himself until he got bored. However, this time it was different.

Against Dark's lips, Link reacted for the first time. As Dark pushed harder, instead of simply unresisting, Link opened his mouth, letting Dark flick his tongue over his bottom lip and press even closer. Dark grinned against Link, his eyes close and lost himself in the feel of his lips, his tongue and the hands that had crept up to lightly hold him just below his rib cage, sending shivers down his spine.

All too soon, Dark felt there was something wrong – he didn't want the kiss to play out this way. It was too easy, Link was too pliable, letting himself be ruled by another. Even when Dark scraped his abnormally sharp canines over his lips, drawing blood, Link did nothing more than pause momentarily in pain and then continue to kiss back lazily.

Yes, Link was finally kissing him back, but his love was still locked away, buried deep beneath his failures.

The Hero was defeated, and now, his shadow, the only one he had managed to save, must bring him back to fight once more.

**Authors Note: So, I hope you enjoyed! It was a lot more difficult to write than I realised, mostly because I had no idea where I was going with Dark's dialogue and then debating over whether Link would react like that, or… I don't know. Let me know if you thought that Link's mood swings were a bit fast/the pacing was a bit fast. I've also found that I have trouble with putting a lot of detail in. J**

**Anyway, thanks for reading!**

**On the Straight and Narrow**


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